pastel promises

Summary:

“Louis won’t go in the egg. Greg, he promised. Harry said he did. I did not sign up to deal with this.”

aka: Pixie Louis in an Easter Egg

Notes:

Requested by Angel, dedicated to Ramona for being a queen and Reili for letting me yell about titles all of five minutes ago and lots of love to Frankie who, without his help, Pixie Louis would not exist.

Work Text:

The plan is absolutely terrible.

Louis doesn’t know why he’s agreed to let Nick stuff him inside of a large purple egg and hide him in the park that they’re having this stupid egg hunt in, but he doesn’t complain when the time comes, instead choosing to pout at Nick for a good minute as he stands inside of the egg, determined to fight the man from closing it on him.

Just because he’s a pixie doesn’t mean he has to be a nice one.

“Lou, you agreed,” Nick says as Louis grips to the plastic rim, fighting with all his strength to keep Nick’s two fingers pressed against the top from closing it down on him. “The lads are going to go on an Easter egg hunt for you and the first one who finds you gets to keep you for the next month. That’s the promise you made and you can’t go back on it now.”

Louis sticks his tongue out at Nick and considers flitting out of the egg before the man can trap him inside but he behaves, just barely, still fighting about getting closed inside the egg. What if they lose him or someone else comes and picks him up? What if they forget about him and Louis’s left in the park all alone?

“What’s going on?” Louis stops fighting when he hears Greg’s voice and he looks up at the man who’s appeared behind Nick, chin hooking over Nick’s shoulder as he tries to assess the situation.

“Louis won’t go in the egg,” Nick replies and Louis shakes his head to accentuate the statement, as if it’s not completely obvious that he’s not complying with the man’s desires. “Greg, he promised. Harry said he did. I didn’t sign up to deal with this.”

“Here.” Greg slips his fingers around Nick’s, smoothly taking the egg from him before he lightly presses a kiss to Nick’s shoulder. “Let me take care of it. You go make sure none of them can figure out where I’m going to hide him.” Nick shrugs a little and he looks back at Greg for a moment before he makes his way over to the boys who are arguing over whether it’s fair or not that Liam and Zayn get to participate seeing as they share a flat and will win Louis either way.

Greg stares at Louis for a moment, watching as the pixie kind of gives up on the fight now that Nick's not forcefully trying to enclose him in this plastic cell. "Are you nervous about being trapped in there?" Greg asks him and Louis wonders if he really is or is he's just mainly nervous that he'll be forgotten. After all, it's not really the egg that's a problem because he's slept in smaller places when he was still living in his pixie home, like inside of one of the closed-up flowers that was still waiting to properly bloom. That's where Harry initially found him, sleeping inside of a a flower bud.

No, that's not it. Louis's scared he's going to be lost and forgotten and left alone all again but this time he'll be trapped inside of a piece of plastic that he can't wiggle his way out of. He looks up at Greg and blinks a little bit before he leans against the rim of the egg and quietly, just barely puts the words into Greg's head. Please don't lose me.

"Never," Greg swears and he reaches his free hand out, placing a finger on the egg so that Louis can reach out and touch him. It's a little bit weird, but Louis reaches his hands our and he grips to Greg's finger, feeling comfort in the action before he grips a little tighter to Greg's finger even though it doesn't do much for the extremely tall human. "You're family, Louis," he tells him softly. "Couldn't lose you even if we tried."

The fact that they consider him family stirs something inside of the pixie and he nods a little bit, pulling away from Greg after a moment before he sits down in the bottom half of the egg, smiling to let Greg know that he's okay with this and that he doesn't mind being the prize for this game that they're playing. "I think Nick's going to try and win," Greg jokes gently as he shifts the lid of the egg to line it up with its base. Louis flutters his wings in protest and Greg laughs quietly in response. "Don't worry, I won't let him. You'll get one of the lads, no doubt, and if you get uncomfortable in there at all and want out, I'll be keeping my eyes on you. Send a distress signal or talk to me and we'll get you out of there."

Louis nods in understanding again and Greg moves to close the egg again but before he can, Louis reaches our and grabs onto Greg's finger, leaning forward and resting the tip of his nose against Greg's fingernail before he kisses he skin there quickly. It would go unnoticed if greg hadn't been watching and there's a smile on his face as Louis lets go of his finger. "Love you, little Lou," he whispers before he carefully closes the egg and Louis's engulfed in a weird purple light from the sun beaming down through the egg.

It's weird, being trapped inside of this little egg and Louis knows that if he's really truly terrified he can just magic the top off with pixie dust or something like that, but there's a part of him that feels strangely at ease, being inside of here. To Louis, it feels like being home if he ignores the fact that he's sitting on a piece of sharp plastic that he can't quite manoeuvre around. The lighting from outside comes and goes as he's slightly jumbled around in the process of Greg hiding him and he thinks that if his friends from home could see him now... The thought brings a laugh about in his chest and the bell sounds ring out as he clutches to his stomach, thinking about the fact that he went from one of the most frustrating pixies in their clan to an obedient little human pet that hides in plastic eggs for his family.

That's the first time Louis's ever thought of them as a family and he stops laughing almost instantly, the thought overwhelming him to the point that were he human, he would've forgotten how to breathe.

They are a family, the boys and Nick and Greg. Louis doesn't know how he didn't realise this ages ago whenever Harry first shared him with the lads and they didn't go and send him off to a scientist to have tests run on him. They let him sleep in their hair and they take care of him and get upset and worried whenever he's gone into hiding to try and mess with them and- ...and Louis's got a little human family all of his own.

It's really baffling to Louis how he didn't realise this earlier and he's now ruminating on the entire situation, barely acknowledging that he's not being moved about anymore. How did he miss such an important thing when his boys are on a mission to try and see who can win him? It seems like he's just a prize, but the fact of the matter is that there's four amazing people that he absolutely loves wanting to have him in their lives; six, if you include Nick and Greg. Before he ended up in Harry's care, Louis had felt at home with his own kind, but now that he's here he really knows what home is.

Home is Harry and Liam and Niall and Zayn. Home is the fact that Harry's gotten things custom-made for him, that Niall eats Louis's favourite things when he brings Louis to work just so that the pixie can munch on his favourite crumbs and Zayn sketches him over and over, always in a new setting with the rest of them as pixies just so Louis can imagine they're all the same size. Home is being invited in strange customs and holidays he doesn't understand, getting presents even though he doesn't celebrate weird things like Easter or his birthday, or finding day as Harry calls it.

This is home, and Louis doesn't know he didn't see that ages ago. He didn't lose his home and his family when he chose to stay with Harry instead of going back to his clan. No, he gained one, and Louis's never been happier.

Louis's practically beaming as he closes his eyes, leaning against the plastic egg as he thinks of his, very tall and very different, but very loving family. He could count on his hands the things that have made him happy from his days with the pixies but here, here he can't even begin to try, and that's the thought that he's stuck on when the darkness that he's grown used to gives away to blinding light. It takes him a moment to adjust to such a change, but he recognises the voice that brightly says, "I found Louis!"

He was possibly, just maybe secretly hoping that Zayn would end up being the winner, and Louis's really glad that he sees him smiling at him, leaves caught in his hair as if he had to crawl through a bush to find Louis (Where did Greg hide him?). Really, Louis would've been happy with either Liam or Zayn because it means he gets both of them in the end, but he loves going to university with Zayn and loves when the boy draws him so this is a big win for Louis.

(There's secretly a tiny part of him that's sad that Nick didn't find him, but then again, Louis imagines all his boys would've demanded a redo if that had happened. He like Nick, even if he fights with him every chance he gets.)

Louis flies up out of the egg and he settles on Zayn's shoulder just in time to catch Niall's whines of, "Not fair. You and Liam always get Louis," and Louis pouts because Niall really has gotten him the least out of the four. He untangles his hands from the fabric of Zayn's shirt collar that he's been using to maintain his balance and flits over to Niall, lightly tapping him on the nose before he crawls into the blonde's hair and lets he words, I'm yours next, seep into his brain.

He can practically feel Niall relax after the few words and Louis grins a bit as he watches Liam grab onto Zayn and give him a congratulatory kiss before Greg chimes in to let them know they haven't found all the eggs yet.

When Niall starts practically running on an egg hunt, Louis relocates to Greg's shoulder and he rests against the sun-warmed skin on his neck, quietly watching the boys disperse again to finish off the hunt, or so he thinks. A minute passes before Harry reappears and looks directly at Louis as he ruffles his curls and flashes the pixie a smile.

"Gonna miss you messing up my things," he says fondly and Louis frowns a bit before Harry says, "None of that," and lifts his hand up, placing a finger on Louis's legs. "Liam will feel bad about it and make Zayn share you, so you'll probably be back in a week, but until then..."

Harry pulls back and he reaches in his picket, pulling out what looks like a tiny decorative box before he places it in his palm, offering it out to Louis. "Happy Easter, Lou," he says and Louis steps onto his palm before he tears at the box's wrappings, making Harry laugh. It's not that he's untidy, really, but the professional look of the package just makes him so curious that he can't hold back.

When he finally gets the box open, which is harder than it looks, Louis tugs out a piece of fabric before he runs his fingers over what seems to be a set of professionally crafted outfits made just for him and looks up at Harry with wide eyes.

"One of the girls in Zayn's art class made them," Harry explains softly and he smiles at Louis. "One from each of us. Oh, and-" Harry reaches into his pocket again and he pulls out another little box. "This too."

It's already so much that Louis doesn't even know if he wants to open the other box. His family got something specially made just for him because he was worth something to them, and that thought is enough to make Louis wish he were human so that he could hug them all and never let go. He's not sure if he can handle another present, but he opens it anyway, this time carefully removing the wrappings as if they're just as precious as the present.

What he finds inside surprises him, and Louis's completely silent as he runs his fingers across the fake leather jacket, carefully put together and embroidered with his name on the front and 'Pixie Crew' carefully stitched into the back. "We all have them," Harry says softly and Louis looks up at him, too emotionally overwhelmed to even react to this news. "But yours is the most important. Without you, we wouldn't have a pixie to create a crew for."

Louis's almost certain that he's going to cry and he flies off of Harry's hand, griping to his neck as he hugs Harry as tight as he can, burying his face into the boy's neck. He's the luckiest pixie in the world and he knows this, knows that no other pixie- no, that no other person in the whole wide world is luckier than he is, and Louis just wishes that he could show his family how much he loves them.

He can hear Harry's smile in his voice when he tells him Happy Easter again, and when it's chorused by the rest of his family, Louis pulls back and flies around, hugging each of their necks in turn. He's genuinely never been happier than he is in this moment and he knows that he'll disagree with that thought somewhere in the future but right now, all he needs is his four boys and two favourite DJs by his side for however long they'll have him.

Two hours later when he's buzzing around them all eagerly from inhaling half a chocolate bunny all on his own, he's certain they regret their choices, but Louis knows he downs regret his. He never will.